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Publications (104)
Comment « danse » une peinture ? Comment peut-elle sembler « vivante » ? À travers l’analyse de deux œuvres de Mantegna, cet article se propose de montrer qu’une image en perspective, considérée du point de vue de la polarisation entre ritrarre et imitare qui caractérise l’art italien du Quattrocento, semble vivante lorsqu’elle apparaît à la fois c...
Tradução do texto: Severi, Carlo. 2018. Authorless authority: forms of authority in oral traditions. In Capturing imagination: A Proposal for an Anthropology of Thought. Carlo Severi, 99-121. Translated by Catherine V. Howard, Matthew Carey, Eric Bye, Ramon Fonkoue and Joyce Suechun Cheng. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Frank Nabeta possui g...
Dans ses Questions romaines, Plutarque convie son lecteur à une promenade à travers Rome, chaque station étant à la fois l’occasion d’observer des éléments d’architecture et d’aborder un thème en lien avec la vie, la culture, la politique ou la religion. C’est du moins à partir de cette lecture « topographique » élaborée par John Scheid que s’est n...
obra original: Transmutating beings: A proposal for an anthropology of thought Autoria de: Carlo Severi Tradução: Felipe Neis AraújoFormas de pensar, daquilo que Lévi-Strauss chamou de “sistematização do que é imediatamente apresentado aos sentidos” às teorias causais estudadas por Evans-Pritchard na bruxaria, têm sido interpretadas geralmente como...
In this article, the author proposes a re-examination of the first example of agency given by Alfred Gell in his famous Art and Agency (1998), namely the Zinganga ’nkisi (nail fetish) of Western Africa. This article essentially argues two points. First, the relation between the artefact and the person it incarnates is not, as Gell has defined it, b...
Por muito tempo a Antropologia adotou um modelo linguístico e simbólico da cultura. Alguns autores chegaram a tomá-lacomo um conjunto de textos a serem lidos e interpretados, outros viram-na como conjunto de símbolos a serem decodificados. Aqui seguimos uma direção diversa, explorando o entrelaçamento entre imagem e palavra na produção da própria v...
Dans cet article nous voudrions montrer comment l’approche relationnelle, née de l’analyse d’un rituel, peut éclairer des situations où l’interaction se trouve inscrite dans des contextes autres que rituels. Soit parce que ces interactions ne satisfont pas, comme certaines formes de jeux, toutes les conditions qui définissent normalement une situat...
Forms of thought, from what Lévi-Strauss called the "systematization [of] what is immediately presented to the senses," to the causal theories studied by Evans-Pritchard in witchcraft, have generally been interpreted as an expression of a specific language or "culture." In this paper, I discuss this way of defining thought. Three classic objections...
Translation has played an important but equivocal role in the history of anthropology and linguistics. At least since Saussure and Boas, languages have been seen as systems whose differences make precise translation exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. More recently, Quine has argued that, in purely abstract terms, reference is ultimately insc...
Il rapporto tra i vari tipi di narrazione e la costruzione della memoria sociale è diventato ovvio per gli storici, per gli antropologi e in generale per gli scienziati sociali grazie all’opera di Paul Ricoeur. Se, come ha sottolineato Ricoeur, raccontare una storia non è solo un modo per ricordarla, ma anche per “rifigurare la propria esperienza d...
For linguists, anthropologists and archaeologists, the emblematic image always and everywhere preceded the appearance of the sign. This myth of a figurative language composed by icons—that form the opposite figure of writing—has deeply influenced Western tradition. In this article, I show that the logic of Native American Indian mnemonics (pictogra...
For linguists, anthropologists and archaeologists, the emblematic image always and everywhere preceded the appearance of the sign. This myth of a figurative language composed by icons - that form the opposite figure of writing-has deeply influenced Western tradition. In this article, I show that the logic of Native American Indian mnemonics (pictog...
This article consists of three arguments. The first advocates the development of Open Access for anthropological books and journals and critiques the way we have ceded control of dissemination to inappropriate commercial concerns that come to stand for what should have been academic criteria. The second argues that this is best accomplished while b...
The article addresses the subject of primitivism in twentieth-century Western art from Matisse to Frans Kline. Writing from an anthropological perspective, the author starts with a critical discussion of received notions of primitivism as proposed by the art historians Goldwater
(1938) and Rubin (1984). Arguing that primitivism goes beyond the issu...
In this paper, one attempts to apply Lévi-Strauss' theoretical approach to art to an object he himself has not examined: abstract art in the West. The text begins with a controversy between Lévi-Strauss and the theorist of Surrealism, Andre Breton, over the magic of art. The controversy highlights the originality of Lévi-Strauss as a theorist of ar...
The concept of chimeric representation outlined in my theory of memory not only opened up new avenues of research, but also provoked considerable debate. Three main sorts of question were raised, concerning the morphology, the logic and the form of aesthetic apprehension, or “gaze act”, associated with this concept. In responding to these questions...
Carlo Severi : Votre travail a profondement marque la presence des arts non occidentaux dans l’art contemporain. J’ai ete frappe par cette declaration, dans l’un de vos textes : « La necessite d’ouvrir le cercle ferme de l’art contemporain occidental me hante depuis plusieurs annees. » C’est sur ce projet d’ouvrir le champ des possibles dans l’art...
Archaeology, consistently warned off religion by wise old heads, here rushes deeper into the thicket to tackle the thorny topic of ancient witchcraft. The occasion was a seminar at Harvard organised by Stephen Mitchell and Neil Price to mark the twentieth anniversary of Carlo Ginzburg's influential book on the connections between witches and shaman...
Pour linguistes, anthropologues et archéologues, l'image emblématique, précède, depuis toujours et partout, l' apparition du signe. Ce mythe d'une langue figurée, composée d'icônes, qui constitue la figure adverse de l'ecriture, aprofondément influencé la tradition ocidentale. Dans cette intervention, on essaiera de montrer que nous ne pour rons co...
L’étroitesse d’esprit, le dogmatisme, l’intolérance, le fanatisme sont, à des degrés divers, des formes d’enfermement dans un schéma mental. Pour y échapper, il faut accéder à la « pluralité interprétative » : devenir capable de « manipuler » ses propres représentations et ses idées pour adopter, au moins temporairement et en imagination, d’autres...
Résumé
Pour les linguistes, les anthropologues et les archéologues, l’image emblématique précède depuis toujours et partout l’apparition du signe. Ce mythe d’une langue figurée composée d’icônes, qui constitue la figure adverse de l’écriture, a profondément influencé la tradition occidentale. Dans cet article, l’auteur essaie de montrer que l’on ne...
Version révisée et augmenté de M. Houseman et C. Severi, Le naven ou le donner à voir : vers une théorie de l'action rituelle. Paris: Editions MSH / CNRS, 1994.
It is a general human fact that we tend to attribute, in many social contexts, a status of living beings to inanimate objects. As Alfred Gell has shown, the analysis of this fact can provide radically new perspectives in the field of the anthropology of art. This article deals with this attribution of subjectivity as it appears within a ritual cont...
Chacun de nous a l’expérience d’une parole adressée à des objets inanimés, auxquels nous attribuons, presque sans le vouloir, une personnalité humaine. Alfred Gell a fait de ce phénomène quotidien la base de sa théorie de l’attribution de subjectivité aux artefacts. L’anthropomorphisme ne se limite cependant pas toujours à une telle forme superfici...
No começo do século XIX, na região do Novo México, a necessidade de celebrar alguns rituais essenciais, num contexto definido não apenas pelo isolamento, mas também pelo constante contato/conflito com os índios, fez nascer uma nova tradição religiosa, quase completamente fora de qualquer controle eclesiástico. Este paper é um estudo dessas novas tr...
In the Amerindian shamanic traditions, ordinary and ritual communication can be distinguished from one another due to the capacity of the last -ritual- to transfer and bring to the frontage certain pragmatic topics of communication. Only then ritual communication can submit these topics to an unexpected elaboration, fulfilled through a reflexive de...
With few exceptions, it has been assumed that the production of a generalizing anthropological theory of human cognition must necessarily entail a reduction of ethnographic complexity. No case-centred analysis has been offered to show that a cognitive approach to cultural complexity is possible. In this article, I want to show that a different cogn...
Nous avons tenté de montrer que les recherches longtemps réunies sous le nom de biologie de l'art ont constitué les racines oubliées de la pensée anthropologique d'Aby Warburg. Connues par lui en 1895-1896, ces perspectives nourrissent encore en 1927, à la fin de sa vie, sa réflexion. À partir de l'analyse ethnographique de la représentation des no...
The studies that have, for a long time now, been assembled under the name much less than Biology of Art much greater than form the forgotten roots of Aby Warburg's approach to anthropology. He learned about them in 1895-1896, and the thus opened perspectives were still enriching his thinking at the end of his life in 1927. An analysis of conception...
Depuis quelques annees, historiens de l’art et anthropologues croisent de plus en plus souvent leurs chemins. En ethnologie, une classification longtemps figee et muette des objets et un modele de la representation culturelle axe principalement sur le langage ont ete mis en discussion par des recherches montrant toute la richesse de l’etude des obj...
The Anthropologist Aby Warburg, or Deciphering an Utopia: From the Biology of Images to the Anthropology of Memory. – The studies that have, for a long time now, been assembled under the name “Biology of Art” form the forgotten roots of Aby Warburg’s approach to anthropology. He learned about them in 1895-1896, and the thus opened perspectives were...
Specialists of shamanism have often focussed on the symbolic transformations of the world that a shaman may realize by using ritual language. In this perspective reflexivity appears as an external way to comment upon the nature and effectiveness of ritual action. This article tries to show that the ritual use of language can be equally used to defi...
By providing an explicitly formal account of three ethnographic examples – the Naven rite of the Iatmul (Papua New Guinea), Amerindian shamanism as illustrated by the Kuna (Panama), and African male initiation among the Wagania (Democratic Republic of Congo) – the authors outline a “relational” approach to the analysis of ritual action. They sugges...
Tomando como foco uma análise da iconografia ritual kuna, este artigo procura delinear uma teoria da memória social baseando-se tanto em imagens quanto em narrativas. A emergência do Espírito do Branco na iconografia xamânica kuna refere-se à longa série de conflitos violentos entre índios e brancos que marcam a história desse povo. Todavia, uma ve...
Cet article propose un commentaire critique de l'ouvrage de Giordana Charuty Folie, mariage et mort. Pratiques chretiennes de la folie en Europe occidentale, publie en 1997. Dans la longue analyse qu'elle consacre aux pratiques chretiennes de la folie, G. Charuty, au lieu de supposer connu un substrat clinique (une folie qu'on etudierait a travers...
Augmented and revised English version of Houseman, M. and C. Severi, Le naven ou le donner à voir : vers une théorie de l'action rituelle. Paris: Editions MSH / CNRS, 1994.
How are religious ideas presented, acquired and transmitted? Confronted with religious practices, anthropologists have typically been content with sociological generalizations, informed by vague, intuitive models of cognitive processes. Yet the modern cognitive theories promise a fresh understanding of how religious ideas are learnt; and if the sam...
